Fainter. And nobody’s radio.
Funhole music.
I hear you.
Back then to the dark, boneless slump before the hole, the gloryhole, lying beside it like a lover too timid to reach for what is offered. God it was cold in there. Gray light coming in under the door. And that sound, no more distinct for proximity, same sweet ghost howl not so much siren song as the song that charms sirens. Pillowed again with the bear pad, all my body sore still from the vigil. Aching in my hand like the beat of my heart.
And if I slept, it was a sleep like fugue, and in that sleep Randy’s sculpture began to twist, elegant stance before my eyes, I never touched it but it moved. Moving, nothing so clear as in time to the music but connected nonetheless, its strut like the dance of stalking bone, the weak directionless illumination a shine down its elegant lengths. And me witness through my closed eyes, my dreaming gaze transfixed and then abruptly waking to a pain so outrageous that tears dribbled down my cheekbones, I tried to sit up and found I could not move my arm, my hand, it was like being staked down, crucified to the floor. From my hand a fluid clear as water snaked its living way to the Funhole, and instead of running into its depths formed a transparent black rainbow above it, gaining in radiance as more fluid left me and the pain trebled. I writhed against what held me, I moved my head back and forth as if that would somehow help, rainbow and wall and rainbow again, and Randy’s sculpture suddenly bounded straight and horrifying up in the air as if it would fall, impaling arc, directly into my chest. A coughing scream, no I won’t look and I felt a little echoing thud and looked again to see the sculpture sitting chummily next to me, its metal dripping only slightly, mingling with my hand’s extrusion to form a silvery mix that did not alter the rainbow’s color but gave the bow a jaunty flex that it demonstrated by moving in definite time to the music, which instead of swelling grew dimmer still, maddening as the knowing shine of the sculpture beside me.
I cried, from pain, from relief that I had not been harmed, or not more than was bearable, and the fluid from my hand turned as luminously black as the rainbow and my tears too dripped down black and I cried harder, scared, scared, I still couldn’t move my hand.
And Randy’s voice, obscured but still audible: “Nicholas? You in there, man?”
“Yeah,” weakly, trying to get my voice back. “Yeah.”
He came in, slowly, bringing with him a definite smell of the cold outside, a different odor, lushly astringent, a better world. He carried another piece of sculpture, steel baby swaddled in newspaper. “Nicholas?” tentatively; I realized with dull surprise that the light was either off or burned completely out, I had grown so used to the dark.
“Here,” I said. “I’m over here. I can’t get up.”
“Are you all right?”
“I can’t get up.”
His first look was, naturally, for his sculpture; he noticed its new placement, of course, it was hard not to; noticed too the new configuration: I saw him shake his head. Crouching over me, his own smell was of beer, more faintly grease and gasoline. “Shrike said you were doin’ it,” he said, a nervous, reverent smile. “How’s it going anyway?”
“Pretty damn bad.” Nodding at my hand, twitching it to show it couldn’t move, but, surprise again, the pressure seemed to melt as I twitched it, dissolving altogether to allow me to sit slowly up, muscles burning. Wiping black tears from my face, their trail as tangible as sweat, as blood. “I feel sort of shitty, to tell you the truth.”
“I bet you do, man.” Somewhat embarrassed, but eager, yes definitely that, he took the wrappings from his new sculpture, showed me its sharp diagonals and high-boned dull silver skull. Lovely. Just what I wanted, a death’s-head to keep me company. Almost as bad as having Nakota there, and I only realized I had said that last aloud when he laughed.
“Yeah, right. She’s pretty pumped up about this, you know?”
“I know.”
“Vanese is pissed.”
I nodded, my head felt suddenly so very heavy, as if my own skull had turned to steel, ominous loll in the flimsy carton of my flesh.
“You want me to stay here awhile?” He shrugged himself deeper into his jacket. “It’s pretty cold in here, you know?”
It was not the kind of thing that, once immersed in, you kept on feeling; as if possessed by cold you overcame it. I shrugged. “At least • come out and get something to drink,” Randy said, but unsure in the offer; the Funhole was a taskmaster of some kind, he knew enough to know that, but whether it required regular hours was still beyond him.
Silence. Diffidently, but with raised-eyebrow inspiration, “You could come out for a while, you know, come with me to the Incubus. There’s an opening, free beer, you know? Maybe some food. You want to?”
Oh Randy, this is so sudden. And when I smiled, his face withdrew, a little, not frozen but closed, the quick way you close a closet door in the dark: what’s really behind there? And I realized, with a larger incredulous smile, that he was afraid of me.
“Sure,” I said. “Sure, I’ll go.”
Hair still shower-damp, ice cold against my bare neck, following Randy into the crowded heat of the gallery, my step not so much unsteady as inherently fragile. Even though the lighting was sporadic at best, smoke-dense, it seemed incredibly bright; I kept blinking, almost as much as Randy. The Mole Men, out to take the air.
He grabbed two cups of piss-flat beer, directed me with one elbow to the hors d’oeuvres: withered tortilla chips piled around a bowl of mean-looking salsa. I took a chance. The salsa tasted like chunky kerosene.
“Almost as bad as the art,” Randy said. His beer was already gone. “Can you believe anybody has the balls to show this shit?”
It was pretty bad. I mean, my name may not be Art, etcetera, but this stuff—huge cockeyed depictions of women with tits bulbous enough for a scotch ad holding big cigarettes like guns with smoke coming out of their pussies, with ti-. ties like The Tobacco Industry Wants You, or— my favorite—Fat Kills—I mean, come on.
I said to Randy, “Why can’t you do stuff like this?”
“I didn’t know it was gonna be this bad,” and when I laughed, he did, too. “Let’s get some more beer.”
In our blue-collar dishabille, Randy’s gas-station jacket and me in my usual junkwear, we stuck out; all the rest was fake leather lab coats and baggy white pants, heavy red lipstick and combat boots, clustered in a bunch mouthing the same party line, laughter choreographed and thin. “Art fucks,” Randy said, with intense disdain.
We took folding chairs, plunked them square by the keg, and passed a pleasant hour making fun of everything we saw. Smoke made my eyes dry. The beer tasted so good I was grateful. Randy laughed a lot, mostly at things I said, but from time to time I caught him looking at me, sideways and shy.
“These people, man,” waving his cup in a careless drunken circle, a blurt of beer slopping free, “these people, man, would have no fuckin’ idea what you’re doing, you know?” My shrug made him more insistent. “No, man, I’m serious, I mean they would have no clue.”
“Why?” from behind both of us. “What’s he doing?”
Tall, was my first blurred impression, tall and skinny and wrapped like a sandwich in one of those dumb-looking lab coats. He had a kind of mouth that looked as if it were constantly sneering, but it was just the subtle effect of a particularly weird overbite. He came around our chairs, stood in front of us, in front of me.